The cash dividend of P0.062/share, payable on November 25 to shareholders of record on November 19, was made out of RL Commercial REIT's [RCR 7.21 unch] Q3 earnings. RCR noted that the declaration came from two months of RCR’s unrestricted retained earnings from August 2 to the end of Q3, which it also notes was “one month more than its stated commitment in the REIT plan”.
Annualized, the P0.062/share dividend provides a yield of 3.44%, but it’s probably more accurate to “quarterize” the 2 months of earnings before doing that annualization calculation. If we do that, and assume that if RCR earned and distributed P0.062/share in two months that it would have earned and distributed P0.093/share for the full Q3 (its IPO was in mid-September), then the annualized, quarterized dividend yield is 5.15%.
MB BOTTOM-LINE
The country’s fourth REIT was the fifth to declare dividends, but any hard feelings are probably erased by the hard cash that will be flowing into trading accounts on November 25. The dividend represents over 97% of RCR’s distributable income for the quarter, which is well in excess of the 90% of distributable income that RCR is required to dividend out to shareholders under the REIT Law.
Based on the IPO price, RCR’s dividend was a very healthy 5.77%, which is higher than the projected yield that RCR provided to investors in its REIT Plan and prospectus. RCR is our largest REIT, and it’s keen to continue growing through asset injections, but investors are waiting on more information about those assets to determine how their injection might pump or dump on future dividends from the company.
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